Though,
as you'll see in subsequent items below, network anchors, analysts and
pundits rebuked President Bush for not talking about Enron, criticized him
for pursuing tax cuts and expressed disappointment that he did not call
for campaign finance reform, several also expressed praise for his State
of the Union address.

(NBC News and Fox News cut out the earliest
after Dick Gephardt finished the Democratic response Tuesday night,
January 29, with NBC on to Dateline by 10:25pm EST and Fox, which put Brit
Hume on the broadcast side while Tony Snow anchored on cable, handing off
to affiliates a couple of minutes earlier. CBS and CNN continued analysis
until 10:30pm EST when CBS went to a 60 Minutes II repeat of a Rumsfeld
profile and CNN started a 90 minute Larry King Live. FNC, MSNBC and ABC
News provided post-speech analysis until 11pm EST when FNC put on an
updated O'Reilly Factor and MSNBC went to a live Hardball.)

Below is a sampling of post-speech
evaluations:

-- CBS News. Dan Rather: "In content,
this was a solid, at times even eloquent address. In delivery, proof of
George W. Bush's growth in the presidency, certainly in terms of his
ability to deliver a speech well."

Bob Schieffer: "I thought the speech was
quite good."

-- Fox News. Brit Hume was impressed by the
unusual content of the speech: "It was an address that toward its
end, in passages, had within it the same kind of list of programs -- some
favored by some, some favored by others -- that are the characteristic of
a State of the Union address. But for most of it, it was very different
indeed. It was an address that was filled with warning that the threats
that have been embodied in the war on terror that the President has spoken
of are nowhere near over and the President spoke with specificity about
possible dangers that lie ahead and he said, for example, he spoke of an
'axis of evil,' composed of states that sponsor and harbor terrorism, and
the terrorist organizations that operate within them."
"This was
very much, as we anticipated, a war speech. This was not -- although as I
noted, it did have some of the characteristics of a State of the Union
address, a typical State of the Union address -- it was not typical at
all."

Mort Kondracke: "I don't know how many
State of the Union speeches I've seen, but this was one of the most
eloquent."

-- MSNBC. Tim Russert: "Very sober
speech, but I think a very effective one. The President felt obligated to
go to the country and say, 'Folks, this is real.' He has said over the
last couple of days in the White House to his aides and to anyone who
would listen that he wakes up every morning wondering whether today is the
day we're going to be hit again. He looks at his threat assessment from
the CIA on his desk every day, and he wanted to share that with the rest
of the country, and I think he did it effectively."

Newsweek's Howard Fineman enthused: "My
early assessment is that's one of the most elegant and eloquent
statements of our purpose for being in the world that I've heard, and it
came at just the right time."

Fineman especially liked Bush's calls for
bigger government: "Saying that there are good things about
government. I mean, it is no accident that Ted Kennedy was repeatedly
referenced and shown there because what George Bush is saying is that the
government can do things and can summon the best in people. That's a new
role for the government, at least as far as the Republicans Party has been
concerned. The Republican Party hasn't been giving that message in a
long time, and that's what Bush is trying to stake out, a new Republican
philosophy."

-- CNN. Jeff Greenfield also admired Bush's
Democratic-sounding goals: "Over time, when we get past the politics
and the polls, that I found I must say the most remarkable in this speech
was his invocation of what he called nonnegotiable values of free speech,
the non-oppression of women, religious tolerance, private property. I
mean, if you think about the criticism that people have made about
presidents like -- well, like Bill Clinton, who have tried to assert
humanitarian reasons for American power, he almost seemed to be -- he
almost seemed to be talking the way Woodrow Wilson did, that there were
these universal values and universal principles that we were at least
going to stand on the side of. That's an extraordinary statement in the
state of the union."
Judy Woodruff
quipped: "A Republican President, as well."

Liberal
policy advocacy. Within minutes of President Bush finishing his State of
the Union address Tuesday night, network anchors and analysts were
expressing disappointment at how he hadn't abandoned his tax cut or
championed campaign finance reform.

-- On Fox News (not FNC), Washington Post
reporter Ceci Connolly packed five liberal agenda issues into one
sentence, complaining: "I have to say that part of what also struck
me, aside from how frightening much in this speech was, were the things
that were missing. Very little with respect to minorities, the uninsured,
the homeless, the elderly, Enron workers who have lost their life
savings."

-- Bob Schieffer's first concern on CBS: How
Bush didn't push for campaign finance reform. After admiring how Bush
was working with Ted Kennedy on a patients' bill of rights and was
passionate about a "USA Freedom Corps" to expand the Peace
Corps, Schieffer rued to Dan Rather: "I would also say, one thing not
mentioned tonight, Dan, any mention of campaign finance reform."

Rather immediately relayed Democratic talking
points on taxes even before Gephardt spoke: "Indeed, Bob, there was
however, mention, the President more than mentioned, he urged Congress to
pass his tax cutting economic package while acknowledging the country will
go back into deficit spending. Now, we will have the Democrats' response
soon, but they're bound to raise questions about the President saying he
needs to spend more money for national defense, homeland defense and some
other things, but at the same time he wants to pass more tax cuts."

-- Time's Margaret Carlson, on PBS's
Charlie Rose, criticized Bush for not seeing the illogic of tax cutting:
"I think there are going to be terrible fights and should be over the
economic stimulus bill because George Bush says we're in a recession, we
have to have tax cuts, but he doesn't say the next thing which is
we're at war and we shouldn't."

-- ABC News. On Nightline, U.S. News and World
Report editor at large David Gergen lamented the lack of campaign finance
reform in Bush's speech: "I do think on this campaign finance
reform, the President could have stepped out on that tonight. What we saw
in the Democratic response by Dick Gephardt was he talked about campaign
finance reform. If the Republicans now try to block that, they're going to
get hurt, they're going to get hurt in the House and the Senate if they
just stand in the doorway."

-- Following Gephardt's speech, MSNBC went
to Andrea Mitchell with John McCain. Mitchell asked about Bush's war
policies, but soon got to McCain's pet issues: "Now, on the
domestic front, Senator, you have been critical of deficit spending,
you've been critical of campaign excesses. No mention of campaign
finance reform."

Mitchell also prompted McCain on Bush's lack
of leftward movement on another issue "What about patients' rights?
It's another big area where you disagreed with the Bush White House.
They were not willing to go beyond tax credits, and he didn't seem to
move on that tonight."

Obsessed
with Enron. Before the State of the Union address, network anchors found
it worth air time to predict that President Bush would not specifically
mention Enron. When he didn't, several condemned him for not doing so.

-- Dan Rather made sure CBS viewers realized
Bush's misjudgment: "As you may have noticed, the President did not
mention directly the Enron energy company debacle. It will be interesting
to see if in the Democrats' response they do that or not."

Immediately after Gephardt finished, Rather
strangely decided to read an AP dispatch outlining a liberal polemical
point: "Congressman Richard Gephardt, speaking for the Democrats. You
may have noted that he mentioned the Enron energy company debacle by name.
President Bush did not do so. The Associated Press reports that, and I
quote, 'the measured response to Enron's collapse by President Bush,
reflects concern in the White House that voters view Bush and Republicans
as more sympathetic to big business than to average Americans,' unquote,
the Associated Press. Now, obviously President Bush and the Republicans
vehemently deny that, but you can see in the Gephardt address that the
Democrats are taking a different view."

-- Near the very end of ABC's prime time
coverage Sam Donaldson rued: "Well, he didn't talk about Enron, I
think that's quite clear, and if there's a dark cloud in the Bush
presidency at the moment, aside from a recession, which he probably won't
have in a couple of years, it could be this fallout from Enron. People
don't blame him directly, but the idea that they want it investigated is
there. And all of the money that went to both Democrats and Republicans,
75 percent of it went to the Republicans. He has a problem there, Peter,
whether he thinks he does or not."

Translation: The Washington press corps will
make sure it's a problem.

Later, on Nightline, Ted Koppel raised the
subject with David Gergen: "The President, David, clearly does not
believe that this is a political scandal. He believes it's a business
scandal and will be perceived as such by the American public. Do you agree
with him or with Paul [Begala]?"
Gergen advised
Democrats to take advantage of the issue: "At the moment, he's right,
but I think this is turning on the Republicans and if the Democrats were
clever, they could clearly take the offensive on it. I was surprised and,
frankly, disappointed that the President did not tackle the Enron
situation very frontally: talk about Enron, talk about the abuses of the
open market system that he himself so fervently believes in and plan out a
course of action. I think he did deal with it obliquely and I think that
was a mistake. But I have to tell you I don't see the Democrats, at this
point, who have taken a lot of money from all these folks, too, I don't
see that they're very gutsy on this issue either. It's the media right now
that's leading this charge; it's not the Democrats."

Quite an admission.

-- On MSNBC Newsweek's Howard Fineman urged
action: "The most important thing about Enron politically, at least
to this point, is not any malfeasance in the White House or the
administration because there apparently wasn't any. It's that Enron
and companies like Enron and their behavior call into question our
reliance on this wonderful free market system that we believe in, and
unless the rules are changed and tightened, people are going to lose
faith. And it was one of George W. Bush's idols, Teddy Roosevelt, who a
century ago cleaned up the corporations that had elected him President,
and it may fall to George W. Bush, if he's smart, to do the same
thing."

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, however, portrayed
Enron as a bi-partisan mess, asking Lisa Myers: "Lisa, what do they
think on the Hill? Do they think that Enron has political legs for the
Democrats? Because the fact is that as many on that side of the aisle have
taken money from Enron as have on the Republican side."

Peter
Jennings pressed to see if any focus group members thought President Bush
did "badly" in his speech and, during a segment with Democratic
consultant Paul Begala and Republican consultant Haley Barbour, tossed a
softball to Begala but a tough question to Barbour about how Republicans
can win his fall "without being tripped up on Enron, having it called
a 'Bush recession' and carrying the potential burden of a budget
deficit?"

Following comments by members of Florida focus
group, Michele Norris summarized: "Overall, the President seemed to
get high marks. Most people said that they heard what they needed to hear,
but as always, the proof is in not just the talk, but, as they say, the
walk, what the President actually does and if he's able to actually work
with Congress."

Jennings then engaged Norris: "Michele, I
wonder if I could impose on you and your cameraman to ask two questions
for a show of hands, though I must say I admire your 'walk the walk and
talk the talk' suggestion there....How many people thought the President
deserves his more than 80 percent approval rating? [entire group raises
hands]...Does anybody there tonight think the President did badly?"
[no hands]

Later, he asked Begala not about Democratic
weaknesses but about how Democrats could deal with Bush's strength:
"How do the Democrats, in this election year, run against a man as
popular as George Bush and win on the issues?"

But in his first question to Barbour, Jennings
listed supposed GOP trouble spots: "How do the Republicans now run in
this election year, without being tripped up on Enron, having it called a
'Bush recession' and carrying the potential burden of a budget
deficit?"

At least
half of President Bush's speech focused on strategies to win the war on
terrorism, but CBS's Dan Rather was much more interested in asking his
reporters about how declining economic indicators spell doom for
Republicans. Only after highlighting Enron's collapse, how the Dow Jones
average is down 9 percent since Bush took office and that unemployment
stands at a six-year high, did Rather remember the war, observing:
"It's all well and good to talk about the economy, but there is a
war going on."

Rather wrapped up CBS's coverage Tuesday
night with one question each to four CBS reporters. Three of his inquiries
focused on the poor economy:

-- Rather to Anthony Mason in New York:
"Anthony, the markets sort of took into account, anticipated some of
what was said tonight. And also, are they or are they not, feeding off
concerns of what the Enron company collapse and it reverberations may mean
for he future of our economy?"

-- Rather to Bob Schieffer on Capitol Hill:
"Note that on Friday, January 19th 2001, the day before President
Bush was inaugurated, the Dow closed at 10,587. With today's sell-off,
the industrial average closed at 9,618. That's a decline of almost 9.2
percent from just over a year ago. Now my question, how, if it is going
to, is this likely to affect economic policy in the coming weeks and
months?"

-- Rather to John Roberts at the White House:
"John, the unemployment rate hit 5.8 percent for the month of
December. That's the highest in more than six years and the indications
are it probably, the unemployment rate will probably will go up at least
some for much, if not all, of the rest of the year. Got to be concern
about that among the economic advisers to the President."

-- Rather to David Martin at the Pentagon:
"It's all well and good to talk about the economy, but there is a
war going on and it stretches as far as we can see into the future and the
President tonight moved the country, if I'm correct and correct me if
I'm wrong, to something of a new war
footing by mentioning by name North Korea, Iran and Iraq."

CNN
brought aboard PBS NewsHour essayist Anne Taylor Fleming for post-speech
analysis. "I think the President's speech was much more sort of a
war rallying speech than I had anticipated," she regretted. Fleming
found it "unnerving" that "we don't talk about it as a
moral commitment of the free world. We talk about it as 'America the
righteous,' 'America the good.'"

Fleming complained: "I think the
President's speech was much more sort of a war rallying speech than I
had anticipated. I figured he'd hit it hard and he's carrying the good
will from that, but the idea to plunge forward into other places, that
really was the headline to me."

She added: "The only other thing that was
unnerving to me, as is always in these speeches, is the sense that when we
talk about it, we don't talk about it as a moral commitment of the free
world. We talk about it as 'America the righteous,' 'America the
good.' And I was conscious of looking at Karzai sitting there, I mean,
whose own people have suffered a great deal, and wondering how that hits
him. I'm always wondering how speeches like this play in the world at
large rather than just at home, which is what we talk about. And, you
know, I think that, as I said before, I think there is a global
mindfulness certainly if we're going to plunge forward, that we have to
be much more careful about and that I wish there had been much more
of."

Tuesday's
USA Today and Washington Post delivered headlines over their latest polls
which conveyed the support found for President Bush's performance, a
contrast from Sunday's New York Times which featured this headline over
a top of the front page story on a poll which found 82 percent approval
for the President: "Poll Finds Enron's Taint Clings More to G.O.P.
Than Democrats."

In fact, as James Taranto noted Tuesday in his
"Best of the Web" column on OpinionJournal.com: "Only a 45%
plurality think Enron executives 'had closer ties' with Republicans
than with Democrats (10% said Democrats, 10% said 'both equal' and 34%
had no opinion)."

As Mickey Kaus pointed out in a Slate.com
piece cited by Taranto: "It would also be significant if the poll
showed that this closeness substantially tainted Republicans -- as in the
headline the Times' crusading editors gave to the piece...But there's not
much evidence to support the 'taint' headline either -- since...the
Republican 'favorables' actually climbed more than the Democrats'
numbers."

Specifically, Kaus uncovered a finding not
cited in the New York Times story by Richard Berke and Janet Elder: A
"large gain (46% to 58%) in the 'favorable' rating of the GOP,
beating a smaller (53% to 58%) gain for the Democrats."

Indeed, reporting on the latest USA Today/CNN
poll, which pegged approval of President Bush's job performance at 84
percent, USA Today's Richard Benedetto outlined how it discovered just
the opposite of what the New York Times proclaimed. Benedetto relayed in a
January 29 story that while "29 percent believe Bush felt he would
owe Enron executives special policy treatment in return for campaign
contributions," with 59 percent saying he would not, a much greater
"55 percent believe congressional Democrats felt they would owe Enron
executives special policy treatment in return for campaign contributions;
33% said they would not."

The Washington Post headlined its January 29
front page story about the 83 percent presidential approval documented by
its poll done with ABC News: "Bush and GOP Enjoy Record
Popularity." The subhead over the story about the newest Washington
Post/ABC News survey: "Poll Finds Broad Support Despite Doubts on
Economy." For that story in full:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50835-2002Jan28.html

An excerpt from the top of the January 27 New
York Times story by Berke and Elder, the one headlined "Poll Finds
Enron's Taint Clings More to G.O.P. Than Democrats," which waited
until the fourth paragraph to get around to Bush's 82 percent approval:

Americans perceive Republicans as far more entangled in the Enron
debacle than Democrats, and their suspicions are growing that the Bush
administration is hiding something or lying about its own dealings with
the Enron Corporation before the company filed for bankruptcy protection,
the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll shows.

Even among Republicans, a majority said they believed that the
administration had not been forthcoming about its dealings with Enron.
That perception could pose a threat to Republican candidates in the
midterm elections this year, and undermine the White House drive to
portray the Enron collapse as affecting Republicans and Democrats equally.

In a demonstration of how the public's concerns have shifted in recent
weeks, the economy has now supplanted battling terrorism -- albeit by a
slight margin -- as the issue people want their elected officials to make
a top priority. They fear that the budget deficit is too much of a burden
for the nation, and 6 in 10 favor postponing the Bush tax cut rather than
incurring a deficit.

President Bush's impressive approval rating of 82 percent has not
diminished since the terrorist attacks. As Mr. Bush prepares to deliver
his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, neither party is seen as
having an edge on keeping the country prosperous, improving education,
balancing the federal budget or making the proper decisions about how to
spend taxpayers' money....

Berke and Elder added this in their next to
last paragraph: "The poll also found that the Republicans' drive to
make a high-profile villain of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle of
South Dakota, has not succeeded. He is still a virtual unknown. Eleven
percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Mr. Daschle, 15
percent unfavorable, 18 percent undecided, and 55 percent have not heard
enough about him to have an opinion."

But as Kaus pointed out, the Times/CBS News
poll discovered that "Daschle's 'unfavorable' rating more than
doubled, from 7 to 15 percent, and is now higher than his 'favorable'
rating, which is stuck at 11 percent. Though Daschle's not well-known,
that's the sort of shift in 'favorable-unfavorable ratio' that
terrifies a potential presidential candidate."

For the analysis by Kaus, "Enron's Got
Nothing on Rick Berke! The New York
Times' hyped-up poll story," in which he denounced Berke's story as
"propagandistic journalism," go to: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2061236
--
Brent Baker, with the MRC
night team of Jessica Anderson and Brad Wilmouth

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